Maximizing the Points Chart
The Disney Vacation Club (DVC) is predicated on a few key principles. One of them is the Points Chart, the system that determines when and where you can stay with DVC points. Even the most casual DVC members must take understand the best ways to work the system. It’s the way that you get the best possible vacations with your DVC contract. Here are tips for maximizing the DVC Points Chart.
Tips for Adventure Season
I’ve broken this discussion into five sections, one for each season on the Points Chart. Something you should realize is that some resorts do not have all five seasons. As examples, Disney’s Grand Californian Resort & Spa doesn’t have Dream Season while Disney’s Hilton Head Island Resort skips Magic Season. Since the dates also vary, my goal here is to highlight ideology as much as specific examples. My hope is that you’ll start thinking about novel vacation strategies to get the most out of your DVC contract’s points.
I could talk the most about Adventure Season. The explanation is simple. This time on the calendar is when Disney discounts the points the most. In combination with their recent change in admission ticket pricing structure, DVC members are heavily incentivized to visit during this period. You’ll receive a longer stay, and you’ll pay less for park admission, too.
Disney’s goal here is to “flatten” attendance throughout the year, keeping park traffic steady and reliable all year long. The idea of a peak season is bad business for them. Their park surveys suggest that customers have a worse time when lines are long and too many people are clogging the walking lanes. In a perfect world, Disney’s attendance on January 31st would be the same as December 31st. This will never happen, of course, but it’s the general goal.
That goal is readily apparent in evaluating the dates for Adventure Season. In 2019, this season runs from January 1st through the 31st, September 1st through the 30th, and December 1st through the 14th. The main tip for booking during Adventure Season is to, you know, do it. I’m not going to cherry pick any examples here. I’ll simply describe my own booking habits and then look up the DVC points cost as I do so. My family frequently visits Walt Disney World in September, as that’s my birthday month. Coincidentally, it’s also Adventure Season on most Points Charts due to it being a lackluster travel time for most Americans. The return of school means that parents don’t want their kids missing class.
A stay at Disney’s Old Key West Resort during Adventure Season costs 10 points for a studio on a weekday and 13 points on a Friday/Saturday (which I’ll call a weekend night for the rest of the article). An entire week’s stay is 76 points. Compare that to a stay during the summer. Had I been born in mid-June, the same room would be 14 points on weekdays, 19 points on weekends, and 108 points for a full week. I get 42 percent more for my points due to the fluke of my birthday month.
Even if you aren’t the product of a cold winter’s night, you should still try to schedule your trip for Adventure Season when possible. Ignoring all of the other tips I list here, staying during the season when the points cost the least is the best possible way to maximize your DVC points. There’s a common sense element here that towers above everything else.
Tips for Choice Season
Choice Season at Walt Disney World consists of these 2019 dates: October 1st through November 26th, November 30th, and December 15th through December 23rd. Yes, those dates are oddly specific. You may think that they’re too narrowly defined to come up with any good suggestions. Have a little faith in me!
As almost every DVC member knows, October is the heart of Food & Wine season. The Epcot International Food & Wine Festival is like an annual gift to DVC members. We show up in massive numbers and book Disney’s BoardWalk Villas and Disney’s Beach Club Villas for the duration of the event. Here’s something you may not have thought about, though.
The 2018 version of Food & Wine started on August 30th and will run through November 12th. Each year, Disney seems to move up the starting date a bit. The annual fall event now starts in August! By the time October rolls around, even the Floridians are bored with the concept and ready for the next thing. When possible, you should aim for October for your festival needs. It’ll be less crowded, which is precisely why Disney has set up the Points Chart this way.
Also, I’m going to try to sell you on a pre-Christmas visit rather than a Christmas week one. The good people over at TouringPlans estimate park traffic at Walt Disney World, and they’re remarkably accurate with it. Disney even has discussions with them about certain behind-the-scenes aspects of the Touring Places algorithm. In short, you can trust TouringPlans.
Their Crowd Calendar for December 15th indicates Walt Disney World traffic will be a 7 out of 10. In other words, it will have above average crowds. On two out of the next three days, the crowds are only 5 out of 10 i.e. average traffic. During Christmas week, literally every day is a 10 out of 10. Magic Kingdom might even experience sellouts. Unless you’re dead set on spending the holidays at Disney, the week before Christmas is a MUCH better time to go…and the difference in DVC points is staggering.
Let’s say that you want to stay at Boulder Ridge Villas at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge. A December week during Choice Season costs 107 points. The following week, Premier Season, spikes to 176 points! You’re paying 64 percent more to spend the final week of the year at Disney…which I find silly since the decorations go up on November 1st. You can go much earlier, eat the same food, see the same attractions and decorations, and save a fortune on DVC points.
Tips for Dream Season
Dream Season for Walt Disney World runs from February 1st through 15th, May 1st through June 10th, and August 16th through August 31st. While we discuss this season, let’s talk about standard DVC member park visit behavior. For example, what you may love about the Food & Wine Festival is spending time at the World Showcase at Epcot. You can walk from kiosk to kiosk, sampling all the delicious international cuisine. As a DVC fan, you’ve likely attended Food & Wine several times. You’ve also shown up for Disney’s International Flower & Garden Festival, too. Have you gone to the other two festivals, though?
In recent years, Disney’s added the Epcot International Festival of the Holidays and the Epcot International Festival of the Arts. At this point, festival events are available on more than half the days on the annual calendar. You shouldn’t feel locked into your standard practice of going to Food & Wine. You have more options now.
During Dream Season, you could attend the Epcot International Festival of the Arts for a change. You’d discover new events and a different type of food kiosks. This original batch of menus will expose you to a wide array of new flavors, giving you a different vacation vibe than your usual choices of spring and fall visits. You could get a week in a Preferred Room at Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa for only 113 points…and you could do it for Valentine’s Day! Schedule your trip for checkout no later than February 16th to maximize your points while visiting an entirely new Epcot festival.
Tips for Magic Season
Okay, we’ve reached the phase where the Points Chart becomes less friendly. Don’t worry, though. You still have plenty of ways to stretch your points. This is when you want to think about the importance of where you stay. The dates for Magic Season vary a bit more than the others each year. The explanation is they cover some holidays like Thanksgiving, July 4th, and President’s Day. Spring Break is factored in a bit, too, although the timing for it varies wildly across the country.
For 2019, the dates for Magic Season are February 16th through April 13th, April 28th through 30th, June 11th through August 15th, and November 27th through 29th. Those dates seem random right up until you look to see when the holidays mentioned above fall on the 2019 calendar. Disney charges more for these dates because they know people are more likely to travel over holidays. It’s the flip side of the park traffic “flattening” mentioned earlier. They’re almost discouraging guests from attending and thereby causing overcrowding at the parks.
When you visit during Magic Season, the best tip is to stay somewhere where the points cost less. You’re already getting gouged a bit on the points cost. By getting locked in on a stay at a monorail resort, you’re doubling down on overpaying. For example, a week of Magic Season at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort is 169 points for Standard View or 199 points for Lake View. At BoardWalk Villas, the cost of Boardwalk View or Preferred View is only 132 points.
You can save even more points by skipping the view. A standard studio with parking lot view costs 108 points. Nobody on this planet loves the Polynesian like me, and even I wouldn’t pay 91 points/84 percent more to stay there. So, the best tip I can give is that when you MUST use DVC points during Magic Season, don’t splurge on costlier resorts or room types, too. The same premise applies to Premier Season, also. And I’ll add that I’ve emphasized studios in the discussion thus far.
This logic is especially true for fans of one- or two-bedroom villas. A one-bedroom villa at Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort is 363 points for a Theme Park View during Magic Season. That room sleeps five. Would you rather pay 363 points there or 108 points for that room at the BoardWalk? Unless you have 250 annual points to burn, the choice is clear.
Tips for Premier Season
Spending the holidays at a Disney resort is the stuff of dreams. Many people fantasize wistfully about hanging out at Disneyland or Walt Disney World when the decorations are up and the rides have holiday overlays. As a DVC member, you get to turn that dream into a reality. The closest thing to a catch is that you’ll spend an inordinate amount of points to live out your fantasy.
Let’s take a look at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort to examine the impact. During Premier Season, a weekday night costs 31 points while a weekend night is 36 points for a standard studio. A Lake View room is 37/42. Premier Season takes place during two times only; those are Easter/Spring Break and Christmas week. Along with July 4th, these dates are also the most crowded on the annual Disney calendar. You’ll have to pay to play, so to speak.
My primary tip is that you should investigate the cheapest rooms at the various DVC resorts. Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas offers rooms for 15 points on weekdays and 18 points on weekends. BoardWalk and Saratoga Springs have ones for 20/25. If you want something perceived as slightly nicer, Beach Club is surprisingly reasonable at 25/28.
Similarly, you could flip the script by heading to Hawaii for Christmas this year. A standard room at Aulani, a Disney Resort, is only 22 points, and their points are the same on weekdays and weekends. A studio villa is just 24 points, too. Along those lines, you could spend the week at Hilton Head. It’s not even Premier Season there. That season runs from June 11th to August 27th. Christmas week is Choice Season, and a week’s stay is a frugal 80 points!
The overall idea for Premier Season, and any DVC vacation for that matter, is to evaluate the economics of each points usage. My hope is that in reading this article, you started to think differently about how the Points Chart and have some new ideas about maximizing your contract.